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Eventually, France colonized Canada especially along the St. Lawrence Seaway, had some Frenchmen in the Great Lakes Region, and also in Louisiana. Actually, the French controlled more land in North America at one time than any other European power except for a short time period when the Spanish controlled Louisiana.

If Spanish colonization was driven by the goal to Christianize the natives and extract their gold and labor and the British settlements were agricultural settlements with increasing populations of land hungry colonists whose expansionist aspirations led them inevitably into conflict with the natives they encountered, French colonization of North America was largely a commercial venture (fur trading) that faced difficulty luring colonists. Furthermore, the French were more dependent on the native Indians as both military allies and trading partners. They thus treated the Indians of the region with greater equality and were less at odds with them.

Until 1663, when the French government took control of French colonization, Canada belonged to the Company of New France. This fur trading company relied upon Native Americans to hunt beaver and employed only a few French as administrators and soldiers. The lack of population and settlement made the colony vulnerable to the British who destroyed Quebec in 1629 in a raid. In 1632, this territory was returned to the French in a treaty with G.B., but the crown ordered the Company to recruit more colonists to meet the threat of the British.

In an effort to recruit more colonists, the Company of New France gave large grants of land and titles of nobility to ambitious, wealthy and well-connected nobles or military men who were designated as “Seigneurs.” (san-yûr or sen-yur) “Seigneurs” were then called upon to recruit common colonists to New France.

The Seigneurs constituted a distinct aristocratic class in New France. Unlike the British colonies, New France had a shadow feudal system. Seigneurs were designated by noble birth and imbued with aristocratic honor. They were not, like many of the aristocrats in the British colonies, ambitious men who had made their own fortunes. Seigneurs were given commissions as regular army officers, salaries as civil officials, and licenses to engage in the fur trade. They were thus insulated from entrepreneurial activities and supported by the state.

Seigneurs divided their large grants of land into elongated strips along the St. Lawrence River. These strips were worked by habitants. Habitants paid a tax and had to work three days of the year for the Seigneur. The Seigneurial system represented a form of new world feudalism that lasted until the middle of the 19th century.

The Seigneurial system had only limited effect in increasing the population of New France. The French had only 3000 colonists in Canada and the Upper Great Lakes region (“New France”) in 1660, whereas the British had over 58,000 colonists in New England and the Chesapeake by this date. Even by 1700, there were only 19,000 French colonists in “New France.”

Frustrated with the rate of growth of “New France,” the crown took control in 1663 and began to pay for transatlantic passages. The vast majority of those who came to this region were poor single men. They were from urban centers and were not accustomed to farming. This made it difficult for them to adjust to the new country. Almost all of these young men were either soldiers serving long or even indefinite terms of service or indentured servants (engages) serving terms of three years.

Only 12% of the emigrants to Canada in the 17th century were female. Most of these were fillesduroi (“daughters of the king”). They came from an orphanage in Paris and were given a dowry to come to North America. They were expected to marry quickly after arriving.

Incentives brought men and some women to New France, but they did not led them to stay. Over two thirds of the soldiers and indentured servants returned to France after their term was up. New France grew in population to 15,000 by 1700 through natural increase, but fell even further behind the British colonies in population There were 234,000 colonists (not counting slaves) in the British colonies by 1700.

England had only a population of 5 million, but rapidly colonized the eastern seaboard of what would become the United States. In contrast, France had a population of 20 million but the mother country had great difficulty populating “New France.” Why?

Few French peasants wanted to leave. They were attached to their land and their local communities, adhering to what they knew and fearing what they did not.

Many young single Frenchmen who might otherwise have come to “New France” as indentured servants were recruited into the massive army of Louis XIV.

Climate and Reputation: “New France” was cold and had a reputation for being inhabited by large numbers of criminals and prostitutes and thus for being immoral. The limited number of Frenchmen who were willing to emigrate went to Spain or the Caribbean instead for the climate and a more moral place to live.

The Iroquois of the region had an infamous reputation that made “New France” dangerous in both reputation and reality.

After 1632, religious dissenters were not allowed to come to “New France.” This meant that the large Huguenot (French Protestant) population was not allowed to come to North America. Thus, even after the revocation of the “Edict of Nantes,” which extended religious toleration to French Protestants and led 100,000 Huguenots to flee France, none were allowed into “New France.” They thus went to Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England. Many eventually came to North America as English colonists.

The French who came, however, prospered in comparison with their counterparts in the Mother Country and those who settled in other French colonies. They cultivated larger plots of land, ate better diets, and had livestock and horses – rare among French peasants.

“New France” was also much healthier than France and also certainly than Jamaica and the Caribbean.

Louis XIV (1661-1715) was a despot and demanded absolute obedience to both his civil and religious authority in France and “New France.” The colony was governed by three competing entities: a) a military Governor – General b) a Civil Administrator called the Intendant (who controlled finances and civil patronage), and c) a Catholic Bishop. There was also a “Sovereign Council” made up of five to seven seigneurs. The sovereign council advised the Governor- General, enacted local legislation, and served as the supreme court of appeal. Each of these men or bodies of men were the King’s representatives and in place to effect the King’s will.

There were no elected representative assemblies as in the British colonies and thus little local autonomy. Religious uniformity to the Catholic Church was strictly enforced. (Note this is why the Quebec Act of 1774 allowing freedom of religion for the French who had become British subjects after the French and Indian War so greatly threatened the colonies. American colonists worried that Catholic Frenchmen would try to impose Catholicism on them.) There was also little call for education and thus low literacy rates compared to New England.

Almost all of the population of New France lived on farms along the banks of the St. Lawrence River from Quebec to Montreal. The authority of the Crown did not extend strongly into the “Upper Country” – the vast region of fortified posts around the Great Lakes and into the Ohio valley.

In this gap of authority in the “Upper Country,” the Coureurs De Bois (“the runners or hunters of the woods”) thrived. The Coureurs De Bois were a group of young, independent traders who inhabited the “Upper Country” of New France. They traded with the natives, intermarried with them, and in general served as a kind of renegade liaison between French colonists and authorities and the Native Americans of the region.

The relative lack of “Coureurs De Bois” in the wilderness controlled by the French meant that they did not have the leverage over natives that the British did. Instead, French colonists and Native Americans encountered each other on a ground of relative equality – which one scholar has called the “middle ground.”

“A middle ground could develop and endure only where neither natives nor colonizers could dominate the other, but instead they had to join together to craft new customs and rhetoric to deal with each other as near equals. Already at odds with the formidable Iroquois, the French needed the western Indians as allies and could not afford them as enemies. In the weakness of colonial power, the upper country contrasted sharply with the Chesapeake and New England, where the English rapidly and callously settled in numbers that overwhelmed the natives.”

The French explored south from Canada and the Ohio Valley into the Mississippi Valley through the use of the Mississippi River. The most famous expedition was of course La Salle’s. After this expedition, La Salle returned to France and convinced Louis XIV of the strategic and economic importance of Louisiana. In 1684, La Salle then established the short-lived colony of Matagorda Bay. La Salle was assassinated in 1687 by the starving members of the colony who, in turn, were soon killed by local Indians.

Despite this initial failure, the French envisioned Louisiana as a means of dominating the North American continent. “Lacking settlers, the French hoped to dominate the interior of North America by linking Canada with Louisiana via a system of fortified trading posts attached to a network of Indian allies.” (Taylor, American Colonies, 383) Unlike the Spanish, the French did not attempt to establish a mission system in this area, but rather made allies of the Indians by trading guns with them.

Visions of a thriving Louisiana territory, however, were stillborn. In 1708, the French inhabitants of Louisiana included only 122 soldiers and sailors, 80 slaves, and 77 others. From 1713 to 1731, the colony was entrusted to the Company of the Indies which attempted to establish tobacco and indigo plantations. Between 1717 and 1730, the company transported 5,400 Europeans and 6000 slaves to Louisiana. The Europeans were mostly criminals and indeed Louisiana was used by the French, in no small part, as a penal colony. Life in Louisiana was very difficult because of a cruel combination of flooding and drought that made agricultural production hard. Hundreds of the colonists died and other fled Louisiana. By 1731, only a third of the European emigrants remained alive. Louisiana never turned out to be profitable to the Company of the Indies and was surrender back to the crown in 1731.

During the 1740s, conditions improved somewhat and the population grew slightly. Still, Louisiana remained a financial liability to France and was always considered the least valuable colony – certainly less important than the French West Indies and even than Canada.

In Louisiana, unlike the British colonies, being “white” brought few privileges unless you were also among those in control and authorities feared their poor white populations almost as much as the Indians and slaves. They therefore also pitted the Indians and slaves against poor whites to keep them from uniting. Blacks and Indians were used in the capture, punishment, and execution of white soldiers who deserted.

Relations between the poor French (colonists and soldiers), the native Indian populations of the region, and black slaves who were brought to the area were different in Louisiana than in the British colonies. The French feared a union of Native Americans and black slaves and thus deliberately sowed hatred between them. Black slaves were regularly employed in French militias to fight the Indians. But rebel slaves were turned over to the Indians for torture and execution.

In short, “the Louisiana elite pitted all of the races against one another, relying on blacks and natives to control lower-class whites, just as they employed Africans and Indians against one another.” (Taylor, American Colonies, 387-388)

“New Netherlands” was only a very small part of the Dutch empire, which was perhaps the most formidable of all the European colonizing efforts. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch were in a Golden Age of creativity and power. Although there were only two million Dutch citizens, the Dutch empire controled shipping and banking throughout the world (including the slave trade).

The Dutch enjoyed extensive religious liberty. Freedom of speech was also, by contemporaneous standards, remarkably high in the Netherlands. The Netherlands had an established church (the Dutch Reformed Church), but the Netherlands was a haven of persecuted religious groups from across the world. Both the diversity and the religious toleration present in the Netherlands became reproduced in the “New Netherlands” where religious liberty was granted to Catholics, Jews, and all Protestants. “The New Netherlands” also came to include people from many European countries and even the New England colonies who sought religious liberty.

Dutch women had greater freedom and legal status than in other European nations, particularly England. Dutch women had a legal status independent of their husbands. There was nothing like English common law coverture. Dutch woman could own businesses, go to court, borrow money, and own property.

The Dutch recognized Indian sovereignty and allowed settlement on native lands only after they were purchased. Still, the French attempted to require tributes from the natives and conflicts between the Dutch and the natives arose as a result.

“New Netherlands” was essentially a small military outpost ruled by a governor. The Dutch (and the French and English) did not introduce representative assemblies into the colonies. These were of English origin.

Furthermore, the Dutch introduce slavery into their colony. By 1650, there were more than 500 slaves in “New Netherlands” – more than in the Chesapeake at this time. These slaves were granted land to work, but they were required to work for the Dutch and to pay annual fees or tributes to them.

Despite all of these efforts, however, the population of the “New Netherlands” was only 9,000 in 1660. This colony remained under-populated and relatively insignificant throughout the 17th and into the 18th centuries. Washington have to be compelled by Congress to defend New York City. He did not believe it worth saving.